Ah....one of my favorites - actually, one of the first Keats poems I ever read, and where I first came across the word "poesy"

But...I cheated... I knew I had read those lines, but couldn't remember where, so I googled That's a bit of a problem, so much is googlable these days... I'll say - if anyone gets it right without googling I'll cede the win

(or should we invent another rule, that if you find the answer on google the question is voided? Maybe the one posing the question could do a quick google search before posting the question, just to check that the anwer isn't the first hit that comes up.. Or maybe that's a stupid rule. I don't know.)

‘Sleep and Poetry’ 245-7, John Keats, The major Works [Oxford] page 40.

Noooooo.....you gave it away Yes I didn't give the answer because I felt I didn't arrive at it honestly, so I would give the others a chance to jump in.. Oh bummer. Sorry for complicating things....(best of intentions didn't help).

As the person who suggested this game in the first place, I say that it doesn't matter exactly how you find the answer--just that you find it Even googling an answer is a type of research and it might lead you to read further into the poem, yourself. I don't consider it cheating. It's research. You don't have to know the answer right off the top of your head--not by any means.

Frankly, I spent at least 1/2 an hour last night whipping through poem after poem trying to find those blankety blank lines, , but I must have "whipped" too fast as I know I looked through Sleep and Poetry but the lines eluded me!

That's the one indeed, loaned to him by Cowden Clarke. As for references, this is probably recounted in every biography, but if you're lazy like me, look no further than the excerpt of Colvin right here on john-keats.com, the chapter "Awakening to Poetry". You're next Malia

What was Keats talking about (and to whom was he talking) when he said:

"Why four kisses--you will say--why four because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse--she would have fain said 'score' without hurting the rhyme--but we must temper the Imagination as the Critics say with Judgement."

"She took me to her elfin grot And there she wept and sigh'd full sore,And there I shut her wild wild eyes With kisses four." (La belle dame sans merci)

"Why four kisses--..." Keats wrote in a (long) letter to George and Georgiana Keats, written between 14 February and 3 May 1819, wherein he copied the poem for them. He goes on to say, quite pleased by his own numerological reasoning:

"I was obliged to choose an even number that both eyes might have fair play: and to speak truly I think two a piece quite sufficient--Suppose I had said seven; there would have been three and a half a piece--a very awkward affair--and well got out of on my side--"

"10 September There is a brief mention of Keats in an article about John Clare in the NYRB (unfortunately, it's not online yet but is on newstands.) John Taylor, of course, published both poets - and apparently loaned Keats's precious copy of Chaucer to Clare after Keats's death."